Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.

Things you should NEVER say to fangirls:

sora-baggins:

Whovians: I skipped nine.

Potterheads: They’re just books.

Tolkienites: Why didn’t the eagles just drop them off?

Merlinians: You must have known it was going to end like that.

Hunters: I skipped the first three seasons to meet cas.

Sherlockians: I hate Mrs Hudson.

Hiddlestoners or Cumberbabes: But he is ugly.

All fandoms: Its not real. Its only a stupid story.

I have to admit that I am a Tolkienite, and I think that video is hilarious. There are plenty of complicated reasons that the eagles couldn’t (or wouldn’t) just fly Frodo to Mordor, but otoh I can see from an outsider’s point of view that it seems like such an obvious fix. Tolkien does have a tendency to write his characters into such tight corners that only the eagles can save them.

So you can ask me why they didn’t just ride the eagles to Mordor. You just probably will regret you asked about three paragraphs into the explanation.

Avatar
Anonymous: yes talk about eowyn and antifeminism
Avatar
absynthe--minded:

Okay, so this might be a little lengthy.

I will admit, when I first read The Return of the King (I was ten) and I realized that Éowyn had “given up” fighting and warfare for healing, I was offended. I was hurt. Éowyn was a lot like me - fiery, headstrong, determined - and suddenly I was faced with this realization that I was expected to settle down and be quiet and be nice and just not do what she did. I hated it. She was still my favorite character, but I really resented Tolkien for doing what I thought was something horribly sexist.

And then? Well… then I grew up. Oddly enough I sort of became Éowyn. I grew depressed. I fought not to protect others but because somewhere in the corners of my heart I sought death. I fell in love with the idea of someone rather than the true person, and it turned me hard and cold. And suddenly it made sense. Suddenly I understood that she didn’t fight for any healthy reason. She went to war to die, both because she felt trapped by society and because she felt she had no other choice. She wanted the glory of battle, not the joy of knowing that she was protecting her homeland. This I think is best evidenced in her argument with Aragorn - he’s pointing out (very wisely) that she’s not being left behind with the women and children, she’s being charged with the defense of Edoras. Somebody has to stay behind and rule and do queenly things, somebody has to protect those who cannot fight. And she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to fight for herself and her own reasons, she wants the glory. Aragorn calls her on it, tells her that soon she could be called to fight, “valor without renown”, and she hates that. So she suits up, goes off to battle, and seeks to die because she thinks that being left with the responsibilities is somehow lessening her value as a person.

It takes a stint in the Houses of Healing to show her that she’s wrong.

I almost think that it was her relationship with Faramir that brought her around. Not in a “love transforms you” sort of way, though. Because Faramir is the opposite. He doesn’t seek out war and valor. He wants to fight to protect his people, but his true joy is in peacetime. I’d say that being exposed to that mindset helped her see how wrong she was, which is why in the end she chooses to lay down her sword.

Personally I don’t think she stopped fighting, but I think in the future she fought to protect her people rather than for her own gratification.

I see a lot of myself in Éowyn. Always have. And so it’s hard for me, looking at Tolkien’s work eleven years later, to see this very natural character growth as antifeminist. Especially when we’ve got women like Lúthien, Aredhel, Nessa, Nienna, Varda, Galadriel, Míriel, and Haleth to show that Tolkien did in fact respect women, did believe that they could be valiant and could be whatever they wanted. I think his message with Éowyn was not “women shouldn’t fight”, but “if you fight, fight for the right reasons”. It doesn’t help that he was very  opposed to war and to bloodshed for its own sake.

incorrecttolkienquotes:

This is the only Meta Fridays post I’m probably going to reblog here, but it’s because I’ve gotten a lot of questions/comments about Éowyn from readers and it pretty much sums up my thoughts in one post.

This is exactly what Tolkien was doing with Eowyn’s character. It surprises me a bit that this isn’t obvious to everyone. Eowyn is a storm of negative emotions who fights a real battle with herself and her wounds in the Houses of Healing and finally comes out forged into a stronger, more confident and self-assured person. She falls in love with Faramir, because he treats her with respect and honor, and he shows her what true love, as opposed to obsessive adoration which is what she had for Aragorn, actually is.

And for the love of pete, go read the Silmarillion. See all the women mentioned in the above post? They are all in the Sil. And they are awesome. I don’t know why Tolkien didn’t put more women in LotR, but I wish he had just so people who can’t be bothered to read the Sil would shut up about Tolkien’s inability to write women.

urulokid:

poutineisdelicious:

xekstrin:

majere636:

arachnofiend:

marapetsrules:

bobfoxsky:

“You fool. No man can kill me.”

How many times am I allowed to reblog this before it gets weird?

image

Fun facts: Tolkien constructed this scene because he came out of Macbeth thinking that Shakespeare had missed a golden opportunity with the ”Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth” prophecy

Being letdown by Macbeth is apparently a significant factor in Tolkien’s writing because the Ent/Huorn attack on Isengard was the result of his disappointment that the whole “til Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane” thing was just some dudes holding sticks and not actual ambulatory trees.

so he basically took his favorite shakespeare headcanons and put them into his AU fic

This revelation just knocked me over.

LET ME TELL YOU A THING ABOUT JOHN RONALD REUEL TOLKIEN. BACK THE FUCK UP SIT THE FUCK DOWN YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT ANYTHING YOU’RE FUCKING JON SNOW HERE. LET ME TELL U A THING

JONNY T WAS LITERALLY THE BIGGEST FANBOY TO EVER WALK THE EARTH. LITERALLY THIS FUCKIN NERD WENT INTO WORLD WAR ONE AND WROTE NORSEFIC EDDA FANFIC IN THE TRENCHES AND SENT IT TO ALL HIS FRIENDS WHO WERE PRESUMABLY LIKE “JOHN WHAT THE FUCK”

BUT IT DOESN’T END THERE

HIS WIFE? MADE HER AND HIMSELF INTO SELF-INSERT OCS IN SAID FIC. ALSO MADE HIMSELF A TOTAL TYR SELF INSERT CHARACTER. ALL VERY DRAMATIC. KEPT WRITING THIS FIC UNTIL IT WAS HUGE. AFTER HE DIED HIS SON PUBLISHED IT AND CALLED IT THE SILMARILLION. JRR YOU FUCKIN NERD

WAIT I’M NOT FUCKING DONE YET. TREEBEARD? BASED THE WAY HE TALKED OF HIS OLD FRIEND JACK WHO YOU ALL MIGHT KNOW AS CS LEWIS. THAT’S RIGHT. THAT NARNIA MOTHERFUCKER. WROTE HIM INTO LORD OF THE RINGS AKA THE SEQUEL TO THE SEQUEL OF HIS ORIGINAL FANFIC MASTERPIECE. CS LEWIS FUCKING HATED LORD OF THE RINGS. TOLKIEN FUCKING HATED NARNIA. BASICALLY THEY STARTED THE OXFORD PROFESSOR LIVEJOURNAL CLUB AND THEY FLAMED EACH OTHER’S SHIT RELENTLESSLY YET REMAINED BFFS

SHELOB? FUCKING TARANTULA BIT J-TIDDY ON THE FOOT WHEN HE WAS LIKE 3. WROTE IT INTO LORD OF THE RINGS.

HIS AUNT’S HOUSE? NAMED BAG END. YEAH YOU GUESSED IT WROTE IT INTO LORD OF THE RINGS

THIS FUCKING DORKUS SUPREME MADE UP HIS OWN LANGUAGE. WAIT NO IM WRONG. HE MADE UP LIKE 80 LANGUAGES AND DIALECTS AND ALPHABETS AND SHIT 

BEST PART OF ALL?? HIS OWN LAST NAME, TOLKIEN, WAS DERIVED FROM THE GERMAN “TOLKHUN” MEANING “FOOLHARDY”. DOES THAT RING A BELL TO ANYONE FAMILIAR TO LORD OF THE RINGS??? BECAUSE YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT PEREGRIN “PIPPIN” TOOK’S LIKE FUCKING CATCHPHRASE WAS “FOOL OF A TOOK”. TOLKIEN FIC’D HIS OWN FAMILIAL LINGUISTIC HISTORY INTO HIS WORK WHAT A DWEEB

IN 2008 HE RANKED 6TH ON A LIST OF THE TOP 50 BRITISH WRITERS SINCE 1945. HE WAS A PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES AND OTHER IMPORTANT STUFFY SHIT AT OXFORD

AND JRR TOLKIEN WAS THE BIGGEST DWEEB EVER TO LIVE

THE END

“ She is the lover of all things that grow in the earth, and all their countless forms she holds in her mind, from the trees like towers in the forests long ago to the moss upon stones or the small and secret things in the mould. In the form of a...

She is the lover of all things that grow in the earth, and all their countless forms she holds in her mind, from the trees like towers in the forests long ago to the moss upon stones or the small and secret things in the mould. In the form of a woman she is tall, and robed in green; but at times she takes other shapes. Some there are who have seen her standing like a tree a tree under heaven; crowned with the Sun.

BOLD WHAT APPLIES - TOLKIEN VERSION

jrrtolkiennerd:

I’ve read The Hobbit
I’ve read The Lord of the Rings
I’ve read The Silmarillion
I’ve read The Children of Húrin
I’ve read The Unfinished Tales
I’ve read at least one of the volumes of The History of Middle-earth
I’ve read The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ve seen Bass/Rankin’s animated The Hobbit 
I’ve seen Ralph Bakshi’s animated The Lord of the Rings
I’ve seen Bass/Rankin’s animated The Return of the King
I’ve seen one or more of The Lord of the Rings trilogy films
I’ve seen one or more extended versions of The Lord of the Rings trilogy films
I’ve seen one or more of The Hobbit trilogy films
I’ve seen one or more extended versions of The Hobbit trilogy films
I’ve dressed up or cosplayed as a character from the books/films
I’ve played a MMORPG or other computer game based on the books/films
My favorite part of The Lord of the Rings book is: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King

tralalalally:

The Grey Havens

Then Frodo kissed Merry and Pippin, and last of all Sam, and went aboard; and the sails were drawn up, and the wind blew, and slowly the ship slipped away down the long grey firth; and the light of the glass of Galadriel that Frodo bore glimmered and was lost.

lotr read-along bingo (week twenty prompt: the grey havens)